There were Pilots here, many Pilots, but in the vastness they seemed few. Roger enjoyed his long stroll and occasional topological shortcuts within the endless structure and all its beautiful decorations. But finally he had seen enough, and summoned a study-carrel into existence from one of the microscopic spacetime knots floating ready.

A random choice. It was impossible – or should have been – that she could be waiting inside this particular carrel.

‘Hello, Roger,’ said Ro, mischief on her triangular features.

She was cross-legged on a high-backed chair.

‘Ma’am.’

‘Oh, please. That was my mother. Sit down, won’t you?’

Another chair was extruded, and he sat.

‘You’re not unique,’ she added. ‘You’ll be glad to know.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘No one’s going to tell you, but there’s a possible source of other individuals – many, many individuals, not human – who can sense the same thing you do. And there’s something else: every renegade was turned while spending time in realspace. The investigators are close to one hundred per cent certain.’

Tangleknot training made Roger fast on the uptake.

‘You mean it can’t reach into mu-space, the darkness.’

Plus there might be an entire species that could sense what he could: no need for the Admiralty to take his word for it.

‘Some of its subjects, like Schenck, show exceptional charisma. But of course, they’re not the only ones. My son Dirk, for instance, would make an equally fine figurehead for a radical political movement.’

‘Er . . .’

Max Gould and Pavel Karelin had spent years building up a counter-conspiracy against Schenck’s thousand-strong group of committed supporters, and that was just one hidden aspect within the immensities of Labyrinthine politics that Roger knew so little of. Isolationist versus pro-humanity was just one among a multitude of political axes whose combination produced the background for the so called Stochastic Schism, the widening separation of views that had been temporarily halted by the revelation of Schenck’s true nature.

Within that, there was clearly room for using an historical, romantic figure like the dashing Dirk McNamara as a popular icon; but exactly which movement or individuals, Roger did not know.

‘It would be nice,’ Ro went on, ‘if Dirk had a friend without an agenda. At least someone who knew what really happened in the past.’ Ro gestured toward the carrel walls. ‘Infinite knowledge all around is very nice, but getting it inside your head is the real trick, isn’t it?’ She stood up. ‘You are interested in history, aren’t you, Roger?’

‘Yes, but—’

He was talking to an empty carrel.

That’s one hundred per cent impossible.

With no hint of summoning a rotation – which you could not do inside an unfolded carrel anyway – she was gone. But she had been real, not holo: both his tu-ring and his own senses could detect the difference.

Where she had been sitting, a small infocrystal sparkled.

‘History,’ he muttered. ‘What if I said it bored me rigid?’

But the past could fascinate as much as the future; and how could he refuse an invitation from Ro McNamara, the first of all true Pilots?

Much of the content was episodic, rendered with unexpected impact and detail as he immersed himself in scene after scene, checking metadata when required, following a theme.

Explosions cause the building to shudder. Sirens vibrate the air. In a large room furnished with archaic laboratory devices, a Zajinet lattice-form, glowing softly, is curled in upon itself.

‘Sir?’ shouts a capable-looking woman.

[metatext person.id = ‘Zoë Gould, UNSA intelligence officer’; context.desc = ‘XenoMir facility, Moscow (mask-VAH), Earth, 11/10/2143’]

She’s addressing a glowing Zajinet, and not getting the reply she needs. ‘It’s your former colleague, isn’t it? We need your advice.’

The Zajinet pulls itself tighter, and responds:

<< . . .danger . . .>>

<< . . .yes . . .>>

<< . . .yes . . .>>

<< . . .it comes . . .>>

A metal door crumples, torn down by a blocky, three-fingered hand. A slender female Pilot draws back – a young-looking Ro McNamara, cursing: ‘Jesus.’

The other woman, Zoë, draws a handheld weapon [metatext weapon.desc = ‘pocket lineac derringer’; narrative.significance = ‘abandoning pretence of being a civilian’] and snaps on its laser sight, aiming at the squat, brown, cuboid invader tearing its way inside: one of the Veralik delegation.

‘THE FEMALE,’ emanates from a device on the Veralik’s chest as it waves a stubby pseudoarm in Ro’s direction: ‘HOLD HER.’

Zoë says, ‘Why are you—?’

A man’s voice sounds from the corridor outside.

[metatext person.id = ‘Piotr Yavorski, senior xenobiologist’]

‘The centrifuge hab . . . fail . . . Energy drain . . .’

‘HOLD THE FEMALE,’ says the Veralik. ‘IT WILL ATTEMPT TO TAKE HER.’

Ro circles away from the Veralik [metatext biography.threads. concepts = ‘aikido footwork; tai sabaki; mind-body integration; combat skills’], avoiding it.

‘ZAJINET, THE RENEGADE. IT STOPPED ROTATION. ENERGY—’

Ro swivels away once more, then halts. Strange energies whirl and flicker, an electric sapphire blue predominating, surrounding her.

‘STOP HER.’

‘Ro!’ shouts Zoë, her friend. ‘What’s happening?’

The air is curling, twisting, folding up around Ro McNamara, enveloping her. Zoë, hand covering her eyes for protection, tries to reach inside the disturbance.

‘Ro, take my hand!’

But Ro is no longer there.

*

It was a very different kind of unexpected disappearance. Roger had read about Ro being kidnapped by Zajinets from a xeno facility on twenty-second-century Earth; but most of this was new to him.

He resumed the narrative.

When Ro wakes up, her disorientation is immediate and obvious. She is in a tubular, bluish glass-like corridor, and a woman with cropped blue hair [metatext person.id = ‘Lila O’Brien, assigned to Beta Draconis III research station’] is kneeling beside her. A man stands behind Lila.

‘You’re awake,’ says Lila. ‘Jared, call Lee. Our visitor’s waking up.’

‘Ugh—’ Ro’s face clenches with pain as she sits up.

‘You’ll be all right, I think.’

‘Where—?’

From around a bend, two men hurry into view.

‘She needs the doc.’

‘No way, Lila.’ One of the men stops. ‘Not till we— Just where the devil have you been hiding, young woman?’

‘I don’t—’

‘For God’s sake, Josef. Look at the state of her.’

‘Until we find out what’s going—’

A large hand grabs her wrist, and Ro reacts: rising to her knees and twisting, as the big man whips head over heels, smacking heavily onto the floor.

Then Ro is on her feet and backing away.

‘Who the hell are you people? How did I get here?’

Roger paused the narrative once more. The metatext had already revealed that Ro was on Beta Draconis III: a strange planet with a tiny human settlement, half diplomatic consulate, half xenoanthropological research station, initially considered the Zajinet homeworld, but actually no more than a colony that was later evacuated, leaving humanity ignorant of the Zajinets’ origins.

He skipped to the next chapter.

After trekking beneath purple-with-turquoise skies, twenty two humans find themselves at a Zajinet event that might be a criminal trial, a political debate, or some form of interaction without a human analogue. Flickering, overlapping occurrences of glowing Zajinets fill the dome-shaped hall.